Growing the Green Economy for People and Planet

President Obama: “Invest in What Helps, Divest from What Harms.”

This past weekend, President Obama delivered a commencement speech to UC Irvine, in which he urged the graduating class to take challenges related to climate change seriously. In his address, the President called out members of Congress for resisting efforts to address climate change, asserting that there was no substance behind some peoples’ rejection of the scientific consensus on the issue.

The President used his speech to announce a $1 billion dollar fund, the National Disaster Resilience Competition, to be made available to states having endured a national disaster between 2011 and 2013 for the purpose of rebuilding infrastructure to better withstand shocks from the environment.

“We need scientists to design new fuels. We need farmers to help grow them. We need engineers to invent new technologies. We need entrepreneurs to sell those technologies. We need workers to operate assembly lines that hum with high-tech, zero-carbon components. We need builders to hammer into place the foundations for a clean energy age. We need diplomats and businessmen and women, and Peace Corps volunteers to help developing nations skip past the dirty phase of development and transition to sustainable sources of energy…You need to invest in what helps, and divest from what harms.”

The President’s address should serve as a reminder that we face the challenges posed by climate change together. While there are many steps we can take individually to reduce our carbon footprint and increase resilience to climate change, we also need to act on a large scale. Clean Energy Victory Bonds are a coordinated effort we can make by collectively investing in the technologies that will power the future without releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. By calling your representative and urging him or her to sponsor the CEVB Act of 2014, we can make significant progress towards funding clean energy technologies, reducing our carbon footprint, and increasing our long-term resilience to the effects of a changing climate on our towns, cities, and our country as a whole. Clean Energy Victory Bonds already have 28 co-sponsors (and growing) – reach out to your Rep today and help keep the momentum going!